


then again, who does?

by jewishfitz



Series: Jonmartin Blade Runner AU [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blade Runner AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical spiders, M/M, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Science Fiction, a different kind of safe house fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23948263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewishfitz/pseuds/jewishfitz
Summary: on dreams, memories, personhood, and the stars
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Jonmartin Blade Runner AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811440
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	then again, who does?

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody asked for a Blade Runner AU but you're all getting one anyways. Title is a line from the film. Unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> For those of you who have not seen Blade Runner, I think all you really need to know is that a replicant is an advanced robot that is virtually identical to a human being, and that "retirement" is a euphemism for "execution".

Jon dreams, now.

Not that he didn’t, before. When he thought he was human, when his life was simple. Before he met Martin and learned the truth, before they fled the city together. Before he knew.

Before, before.

Before, his dreams were simple and plain and logical and, quite frankly, boring. Uncreative. Memories, or what he can only call memories, ripped straight from the fabric of his brain and stitched back together to play in some sort of deranged highlight real behind his eyes. Memories of his childhood. Or a childhood, he supposes. Thousands of spiders flowing over his arms and legs after breaking free from their egg sack. It must belong to someone, if not him. It had certainly felt real enough when he had woken up screaming.

But now his dreams are different, in a way that makes it hard to even call what foggy memories he has from before “dreams”, at all. Pictures, colorful and bright. Nonsensical narratives from the present, not the past. Nightmares, sometimes, but not of spiders. Instead, he wakes up screaming after dreaming of a gun pressed against his skull, of origami creatures and artificial owls. If he’s lucky, he dreams of Martin, of his eyes and his face and the way he smiles and his hair in the unnatural glow of the city’s neon lights. His voice. His warmth.

He dreams of unicorns, and of many other things he does not understand.

Jon is confused about this. He thinks that is a good thing, but confusion isn’t something he’s used to yet. The feeling sits strangely in his skull. He is a creature of knowledge, built to know and function and mimic human uncertainty, but never to feel it, truly feel it.

He thought he really felt things, before. It’s hard to know if your emotions are real, truly real, when you have nothing to measure them against. People say that replicants’ feelings aren’t real, a fact Jon brings up with Martin over breakfast one morning. Martin is quiet for a while, before asking what right humans have to define what emotion is and is not real. They get to decide for themselves what it means to have feelings, together.

Jon doesn’t comment on Martin’s inclusion of himself in this philosophical equation. That is a puzzle for him to figure out. Jon can’t help him there.

There’s not much that Jon _can_ help with, and that’s the crux of the issue. He’s a replicant without a job, waiting, as far away from the world as he can be. To live, or maybe to die. A machine without a purpose. Free.

Christ, he needs a hobby.

So he takes up gardening, growing strange, biologically-modified flowers in the small patch of soil outside the safe house. Nothing should grow here, but it does. Jon takes that as a good sign.

And Jon needs all the good signs he can get, especially on the days when he’s worried that they’ve both made a terrible, horrible, deadly mistake. Because he and Martin barely know each other, even if Jon has saved his life a few times. Even if Martin saved him from retirement. Jon doesn’t know Martin very well. He doesn’t know the nitty-gritty, the things that make him tick. 

Again, Jon likes knowing. It’s the habit from before he hasn’t quite managed to shake.

 _You barely know yourself,_ a nagging voice in the back of his head reminds him. _All your memories are lies. Without them, what do you have that the others don’t?_ The others, dangling from city rooftops and slinking through shadows to avoid capture. The others that are not really others, when he thinks about it.

He does his best to ignore that voice. He is Jon. Even if that doesn’t mean what he thought it meant a few weeks ago, he’s still... Jon.

So Jon tries to get to know Martin, to get to know himself. He learns that Martin can do amazing things with dehydrated rations, that he likes those old crossword puzzles, and that he has always dreamed of owning a dog ( _not a real one, Jon! Just a nice one, from a good manufacturer. I’m a dreamer, but I’m not stupid._ )

Of himself, he learns that he quite enjoys classical music. The five years of violin lessons may not have been real, but the memory lingers. He likes to read, even though the selection of books in the dusty shelves of the safe house is truly atrocious. He likes Martin’s cooking. He likes Martin's sweaters. He likes Martin, quite a lot. It’s a little bit frightening, and a little bit thrilling.

And Martin likes him, a fact he does not understand but tries his best not to question. Jon is a replicant. Not even a normal replicant; a replicant with baggage. He has an unknown expiration date. He should have been retired. He has strange dreams.

But people have strange dreams, too, or so he’s been told. And who said being a person was better than being, well, him, anyways? Jon is Jon, is Jon is Jon is Jon is—

And yet still, inexplicably, Jon dreams.

Before, Jon sometimes dreamed of stars, as seen from what he thought, then, was the front porch of his childhood home in the suburbs. They were bright, piercing things, sporadically scattered across the night sky like flecks of white paint on a black industrial tarp. Jon had felt disappointed, living in the city, because it was impossible to see the stars through the haze of neon and smog and rain, always rain.

The stars are bright over the safe house, wherever they are. Far from the city, with no light pollution, they seem entirely new. There are so many more than there were in his false memory, fabricated or stolen or whatever it was. Those dull stars belonged to someone else. These ones, bright and fiery and real, so real even if he can’t touch them or explain them or justify their existence–

They’re his.

They’re his, and he makes a habit of watching them most nights, before Martin softly calls for him to come to bed.

Jon dreams, but he also lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on tumblr for more nonsense, I'm [@jewishfitz](https://jewishfitz.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> My relationship with the Blade Runner series is fraught and complex!!!!!! but I love scifi and I love philosophy and I love electronic film scores. 
> 
> Stay safe and stay healthy y'all <3


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